Aside from a desire to protect the oil supply in Persia, it is hardly as easy to justify the British offensive in Mesopotamia. As events subsequently demonstrated, it was possible for the Turks to throw an overwhelming number of troops into Bagdad and to the south, and, furthermore, they were fighting under vastly more advantageous conditions than were the invaders. Only on the assumption that the Turks were hopelessly demoralized and disorganized, and that as fighting men they would belie all their past history, was it possible to visualize success for the British operations in Mesopotamia. Turkey had definitely come to grips with England and with Russia. She had in none of these fields measured swords with France, although she was equally at war with that country. The exact apportionment of the actual work to be done by the individual powers of the Entente seems to have led to considerable disagreement, and resulted at times in serious delay. Such arrangements depend, of course, upon each country's idea of its spheres of influence. Obviously, no country, if it can help it, is going to waste its men or its efforts in a field in which it has only a minor political or commercial interest. So far as France was concerned, the Caucasus, Egypt--aside from the possibility of the closing of the canal--and Mesopotamia were not of enough importance to justify her in participating in the struggle with the Turks even were it physically possible. All these remarks, of course, are subject to modifications imposed by considerations of the larger strategy of the Entente Powers; but for many months of the war the agreement of the Entente Powers in the matter of general strategy was conspicuous by its absence. With her neighbors in the Balkans Turkey had maintained remarkably good relations considering the bitterness engendered, not only by centuries of strife, but by the recent events of the two Balkan wars. Bulgaria, smarting under the loss of territory through the attack upon her by Serbia, Greece, and Rumania in the Second Balkan War, was openly conducting friendly negotiations with Turkey for the acquisition of valuable territory--a compact that could mean only one thing. Greece, frightened by the menace of the German power, had resisted up to the moment all the blandishments of the Entente Powers, who urged her to active participation in the struggle. Rumania, largely isolated from the Entente Powers, menaced on the north by Austro-German forces, on the south by a revengeful Bulgaria, borrowed heavily from Britain, the universal money bag, but straddled the fence.